


Breakthrough

by cafephan



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: (Non-YouTuber) au, Angst, Post-breakup, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-03
Updated: 2015-11-03
Packaged: 2018-04-29 18:54:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5138825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cafephan/pseuds/cafephan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which one misses another, and words aren’t enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breakthrough

This fic is a songfic for [**Dear Darlin'** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m20BTdy9FGI)(aka one of my favourite songs in the world) so I strongly advise listening to it as you read x 

***

_Phil;_

_I firstly apologise wholeheartedly. Not for the contents of this letter, no not at all, but for my handwriting. It’s scruffy, it’s scrawl, it’s-_

“Fuck” Dan shouted as he screwed the paper into a ball and hurled it at the wall, not bothering to watch its pathetic descent to the floor. He ran his hands through his hair as he kept his gaze on the wooden floorboards below him.

He needed to do this, he had to do this, he _wanted_ to do this, he just couldn’t fathom his thoughts into legible literature. He had attempted poems, a plethora of ballads, sonnets and free-verse alike, but they all ended the same, a character shaking in the corner, cold and alone in the dark of the night.

Nobody understood.

“It was just a fling, I don’t get how you can be like this” Caspar commented when he and Joe came over to Dan’s flat during a cheer-up attempt. Dan simply pressed his lips together and kept his stare firmly on the mind-numbing football game that was playing monotonously on the television set.

Nobody understood.

“Forgive me for seeming potentially insensitive here, but… how can you be like this, Dan? It was a month at most, it was short and sweet. People are in your state after years, not weeks” Louise tried to disguise her disappointment in sympathy, but it was obvious. Dan let his head dip down, and he stared into his paper cup of coffee, watching as the swirls of the caffeine intertwined as the foam dissipated, each imperfection finding a partner and disappearing until only a single ripple every minute or so disrupted the tranquillity. He envied a cup of coffee, but this was his life now.

Because his life had left him a month ago, when Phil left, taking Dan’s entirety with him.

He was now a mere shell of himself, moulded through misconception, the epitome of heartbreak and misery tied up with a shaky, chapped-lip smile that was as transparent as his tears.

Dan’s gaze flicked over to the landline phone, resting on the windowsill, next to where he was sat for the duration of the night before, trying again and again, his hope dwindling as the dial tone continued for minutes at a time, before the automated voice greeted him, after a while it almost seemed pitiful. He couldn’t even live vicariously through an answerphone message.

He glanced over to the front door, and the smashed, scattered pieces of his iPhone that laid in front of it. Nobody understood how Dan couldn’t cope, how every night he would stretch out his arms as he did when they used to watch whatever late-night panel show they could find together, when Phil would snuggle into Dan’s chest, and he was happy. They were happy.

 

_Phil;_

_It’d be a miracle if you could read this. It’s impossible for me to articulate a sentence, or even a word, to tell you how I feel._

_I miss you._

 

The paper was again screwed into a ball and thrown in the same direction as its predecessor, and Dan didn’t spare a concern for the loud smashing sound that occurred a few seconds later and the huge crash that followed it.

He sighed, and walked over to the windowsill. Sat in his now usual spot, he picked up the receiver of the landline, and pressed speed-dial 1. He rested the receiver on the sill, and listened intently as the invisible operator linked the call through, and Phil received it. Dan waited, that’s all he did now, and he waited.

He waited until the line went dead, not even to be greeted by the answerphone.

His eyes squeezed closed as his head gently rested upon the window, a stray tear dribbling down his cheek as the rain continued to fall, dancing with the utmost intricacy upon the windowpane, harmonious with the rumble of thunder in the oncoming distance. He allowed himself to cry relentlessly for the first time, drowned out by the eruption of lightning, gaining dominance of the murky sky, a metaphor to himself wrapped up with a fluffy-cloud bow.

His eyes reluctantly opened to the sight of a notebook he had left from the night before, one of many scattered through the flat. The ballpoint laid upon it, the paper only slightly crinkled in comparison.

Dan’s hand was stretched out for the utensils, but his fingers curled back as the paper was just within reach. He was shaking, as was usual by this point, and his mind cast back to the time when he first tried, and every time he had thought a ‘what if’.

Then came the sub-conscious scribbling.

 

_Phil;_

_You’d laugh at me, you’re probably laughing at me right now, at my handwriting. You always hated when I tried to write while upset, didn’t you? You used to say it was illegible, unnatural, unnecessary…_

_Ironic, truly._

 

Another balled up piece of paper thrown carelessly against the wall.

“I think you need to get out a bit, you’ll forget all about it!” Joe insisted a few days ago on a whirlwind visit, when Dan kept his focus on the news story about a couple being reunited. Joe didn’t see him cry, because he didn’t. He wrote, reams and reams of similes and juxtapositions, about blue reuniting with brown, pale touching tan, plump kissing chapped. Summarised with a nine-word length; _I was warm in the hold of your eyes._

“But didn’t you meet on a blind date of all things?” Jim had asked casually, yet laced with disapproval, during a Skype call clearly fuelled by Caspar’s gossip tendencies, and Dan nodded, expression deadpan and head dipped once again.

Nobody understood.

 

_Phil;_

_No-one understands what we went through._

_Yes, to some it was short, maybe even sweet, they just say we tried._

_Did it ever feel like trying to you? Were the kisses ever forced? Unneeded? Unwanted?_

_Were the amorous exchanges ever misconstrued? Emotionless? Routine?_

_I’ve been thinking. About you, about us, which you could argue would mean I was daydreaming. Imagining._

_I miss you._

_It was never forced. It was never anything but the truth, these arms are yours to hold, whenever you may want them._

_If these words were to ever break through wall of my illiteracy and into something readable for you, and this were to end up at your door, I just want you to know something… I mean them all. Every phoneme, every syllable._

_But there’s something that means more._

_I love you, Philip Michael Lester, and it scares me to think that I may love you forevermore, as long as I am still here._

_I wish I had told you sooner, maybe things could have been different…_

_I love you, Phil, there’s no hiding it._

_Nothing hurts like your absence, and nobody understands._

_Envision the rest of this page is filled with the many reasons why I love you and forever will, all written neatly, in a cursive font. Envision the rest of this page subtly alludes to why you should come back home, to me._

_Please excuse my writing, I fear I may be digressing. I can’t stop my hand from shaking. I can’t cope, I can’t function._

_Envision the rest of this page is filled with the many reasons I wish I could kiss you, just for one last time, and why I treasure you more than I treasure my very life. You were my life when you walked out, and I fear you will be even in ten years’ time when I am but a simple wistful, casted away thought after seeing a milky brown cup of coffee left on a park bench._

_I miss you, Phil, and I love you._

_All I can say is… I mean everything._

He reread again and again, far past the point of needing only to dot the Is and cross the Ts.

The paper made contact with the wall, tumbling down to the wooden underlay, and rolled under the dining table.

He padded into the bedroom, ice-cold in temperature, not bothering to switch out the lights. Another sleepless night, alone, cuddling a pillow in place of the love of his life who had slipped through his fingers.

\---

_Dan;_

_I’ve been thinking._

_I’ve made the biggest mistake of my life._

_My words, they’re weak, I know. My hopes, they’re dashed, naturally. I just wanted to write you… maybe for closure… really for reconciliation._

_I’ve cried every night, and nobody understands. They say we were only a short, sweet, whirlwind of a romance, and that it makes no sense for me to be in the state I am. They say we tried, and that had to be enough._

_But it never felt like trying to me, not once did it feel forced. Everything I said, I meant with all my heart._

_But there’s something I want to tell you, before my hand starts shaking erratically as it has every time before this and you’d have to excuse my illegible handwriting._

_I’m unequivocally, irreversibly in love with you, Daniel James Howell, and it’s daunting and utterly terrifying to me that I am certain I will be forevermore._

_I wish I told you before, I wish I told you this in place of what I said that night. I was wrong._

_I miss you, and nothing hurts like knowing you’re not next to me at night. It’s cold and lonely without you. I can’t cope._

_If you ever receive this, and I’ve somehow managed to make it readable, I want you to take but one thing away from it._

_I love you. It’s a big word, a huge, ginormous word with immense connotations, but I mean them all. Every single one._

_I love you, Dan, and I no longer feel afraid to say it._

_Picture the rest of this page tells you the reasons why, the reasons why I love you eternally. The reasons why I want to come back, to kiss you even just one last time, to just be in your presence for but a minute._

_I’ve gone off on a tangent, and I apologise._

_Yes, this has been fluffy (maybe saccharine?) but please know this;_

_I mean every single word. I mean them all._

Phil looked down at the envelope marked _Dan_ that sat on his lap, having repositioned it after breaking the speed limit to arrive at Dan’s apartment building in record time and the letter jiggled about on the passenger seat.

He looked up at the sixth row of windows, and his gaze settled on the fourth set across.

Beads of sweat formed on his forehead in anticipation as the lift ascended to the sixth floor, and the envelope crinkled slightly as his hand began to ball into a fist. Determination emanated from the man.

It was a short journey before Phil was stood in front of the door he was well acquainted with, the glossy wood waiting for him to knock upon it.

He stood in silence, not moving a muscle, for minutes at a time.

His fingers began to uncurl from their fist as his fingertips ghosted in front of the door, centimetres from making contact.

The envelope began to audibly crinkle, and Phil realised he was shaking, badly. He raised his head again and studied the intricacy of the pattern within the wooden door, and his fingers retracted.

He sighed, and placed his other hand on the envelope too, and he bent down to set to place it on the doormat.

Again, his fingers began to uncurl from their grasp as they hovered above the mat, shaking, and Phil sunk to his knees, pressing his hands to his forehead, completely crinkling the envelope in the process.

He looked again to the door, silently praying that the love of his life would be there, in the doorway, but he wasn’t. Only the merciless, dank lighting of the building corridor greeted him, doing all but commanding him to leave.

He ran his thumb over Dan’s name and rose to his feet, and began heading back in the direction of the lifts, the envelope dangling loosely between his fingers as his arm swung helplessly by his side.

Phil cast one last, tear-filled stare over his shoulder to Dan’s flat as the lift door closed behind him.

 

**Author's Note:**

> As I said before, this is one of my favourite songs ever so I really hope I did it justice? Even a little? Probably not but still, please let me know what you thought!
> 
> Also SOMETHING INSANE HAS HAPPENED AND I'M SO HAPPY. I've gained a few nominations in the 2015 phanfic awards!! If you'd like to vote for me (which if you do, thankyou so much) just go to my blog - cafephan.tumblr.com - and click on the 'Important/Exciting' link in my description and follow what the post says, I laid it all out clearly c: (or, alternatively, go to the phanficawards blog and go through the polls until you find the fics you want to vote for) 
> 
> Thankyou for your ongoing support, I wouldn't still be writing phanfiction if it weren't for you lovelies xx


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